This blog contains lessons learned by me through the process of mapping for Single Player games, primarily, Half Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead (yes Left 4 Dead can be considered a single player game).
This blog's focus is on the player experience. To hell with the nuts and bolts of the level editor, the entities, models and brushes. This blog is about coming up with a final result when it's all put together.
How does the player feel about the experience?

Friday, 13 April 2012

First up we have a fantastic Let's Play video in two parts from DrOcto!He has a wonderful German accent and it's a genuinely funny video.

Part 1:DrOcto makes a new friend called Paul and then kills him and loses him repeatedly....

Part 2:DrOcto forgets about Paul completely and instead gets on with playing the mod.Seems obsessed with gifts!

Next Up!

Bilaros sent through an almost completely cold playthrough of the mod. There's no commentary but what's really interesting is you can see his thought process as he approaches each puzzle. You can almost hear the cogs whirring away in his head and see the moment it clicks.Fun to watch...

As a level designer it's fascinating to see how each player approaches each new situation. What are they drawn to, what misunderstandings occur. Do they understand what is important in that space etc...

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

I wanted to share my recent experiences of creating maps designed for the player to drive around in and things to consider when building vehicle based maps.
I've also been working with allied NPCs and critcal allies which can add their own frustrations to proceedings.
Critical Allies
When you introduce a buddy character to the player who must be protected or its game over, you change the nature of a first person shooter. The player has to keep an eye out for a second party. This can be used in a variety of ways that can enhance or destroy gameplay.
Pros:
1: The player no longer has to worry about running out of ammo, they can fall back on their buddies firepower if they need to. Anyone who had completed HL2: Episode One achievement "The One Free Bullet" will understand that it is totally possible to survive this way if you alter your playing style.
2:
Firefights become more dynamic if you set areas up correctly. For example, adding raised areas the NPC ally is happy to move to can give a real sense of teamwork and allow for some strategic thinking by the player.
3:
NPC allies are a great way of controlling the flow of play. Adding gates that only the NPC can open will allow you to control when the player can move forward and can solve many gating headaches. This is seen numerous times with Alyx and the Vortigon in Episodes 1 and 2. Often it allows time to pause, deliver some story or some form of reaction to the situation. All of this makes for a more pleasing game experience if used in the right measure.
4:
Buddy characters can also be used to make the player feel special. Alyx in HL2 repeatedly congratulates the player on being awsome as does the Vortigon. In fact, this mechanic is used so much that its a huge slap in the face when you meet Dr Magnusson at White Forest who does nothing but criticise.
Still, FPS gaming can be a lonely experience sometimes and its nice to have someone telling the player they're smart and skillful.
Cons:
1:
From a map design perspective critical allies can be a real headache. The player must never lose them, they have to be able to reach the player through the majority of the map (aside from areas designed to seperate them). Also, they should never be in a place of danger unless the player can help to defend them.
2:
The player can get frustrated waiting for the buddy to catch up.
Ive heard from players who spent the whole of HL2 trying to ditch Alyx. "she's always there again when the next section loads!" one player moaned "I hate her". Buddy gameplay isnt for everyone but you can certainly make it far more bareable by ensuring that when the player completes a loop in the map and they've left the buddy behind somewhere, that the buddy is right there ready and waiting for them to move forward. If the buddy is half a mile away, the player is going to get peeved, trust me.
3:
The buddy can get in the way. Always make sure your walkways etc.. are wide enough for the player and the buddy to move past each other. As anyone whose ever played Counterstrike will tell you, there's nothing more infuriating than someone camped right behind you, so that when you need to back up, you cant move. Death often follows!
Always give the NPC buddy lots of room to move around so that they can make the best of the "get out of the players way" logic they've been programmed with.
4:
They can reduce the challenge of a map. Because NPC allies often have huge health pools it can often make the game much easier. When it comes to combat, dont be afraid to up the numbers of bad guys as the npc buddy will seriously increase the players damage potential. Playtesting should help you find the right balance.
Thoughts on vehicles
Adding drivable vehicles to your map can add great variety to the gameplay but I've found you'll need to consider some things when designing you playing spaces.
Your map areas are probably going to need to be outdoors due to the large spaces required. This means that you'll need to learn how to make displacements and get good at making them. I have found that creating template sections of maps can be very helpful as these can be used to create various layouts which the mapper can then re-arrange at will. You'll need to create a straight, a sloped straight (to go uphill or downhill) and a 90 degree turn, at minimum. A 45 degree turn section can add a bit more variety and realism. Intersperse these template sections with larger areas with more interesting gameplay.
How do you make sure the player doesn't lose the car?
This is a bit of a tricky one. Where a car can go... people can walk... so how do you make sure that the player brings the car with them into a new section of the map where they are going to need it?
How do you make sure they dont end up stranded with no transport?
Well I've come up with several potential solutions...
1: add a jump that only the speeding car can clear
2: add a wall/gate that only the player can break through in the car
3: add an electrified floor
(not very realistic...)
4: add more cars. Add a spare car in each new section of the game.
5: build a route for the player to go back and get the car on foot...
I may employ one or more of these methods in Deep Down... we shall see!

Sunday, 8 April 2012

A while back I added a post about some prefabs I had created that I added to my map pack Daylight. They didn't have a huge amount of purpose but were added as oddities that the player could interact with and simply made the player experiences a little more fulfilling (or at least that was my intention).

Continuing this theme I think it's really important to make as much as possible in a map, a game for the player. So what do I mean by that?

Consider a standard item pickup. You can add an item anywhere in a level and the player simply has to walk over to it in order to obtain it. Not much fun really.Why not add a little challenge? Place the item inside something, behind a pane of glass or a fence or something that requires the player to just go that extra step in order to obtain it.

This kind of mini-game challenge is great in an area that has no bad guys in it. The player can take their time and simply enjoy playing with the mini challenge you have set them. These mini puzzles don't have to be complex at all. Just fun...

The best examples of these are the weapon cache items in HL2 Episode 2. Each cache had a mini puzzle or challenge associated to it, short, simple and fun.

Next time you want to add a pick up, think about how you could make it just a little less simple for them. It will add greater playing time to your map and the player will feel that they received a far more detailed experience.

I've been trawling through ModDB recently, reading blogs, reviews, concepts and checking out every HL2 mod in the works on that site. There are some stunning examples of truely innovative gameplay and fanstastic maps but there is also a huge abundance of awfulness (as you would expect). For every mod that shows potential there are about five that have nothing going for them at all and even if they ever reached release (which they wont) would be bland as hell.
The ones that really get my blood up though are the mods that have an amazing gameplay demo video on the site, but they have not released any playable content after a huge amount of development time.
The old rule "release early, release often" holds true for games as much as any other software product. Initial betas of counterstrike were playable, but clunky. Still the team knew they had something fun that people wanted to play. Thats all you need! The community stuck with them because it was always fun to play.
Many mod teams have an unhealthy obsession with perfection or that someone will steal their ideas. They should probably realise that if your attepting perfection, you wont reach it and... trust me.. your ideas probably are not that original and it's doubtful there are lots of people out there just waiting to steal your mod content. If you feel your idea is original, its probably not that good. There are very few original good ideas around. You are not going to re-invent gaming as we know it and at the end of the day, its just a feckin computer game.
It's also very unlikely that your amazing mod, when finally released, will get you hired by a games company. Its far more likely that, by releasing actual playable content iteratively and regularly, you'll learn a lot more through player feedback and become a better game maker thus making you far more hireable. You'll also have a much higher profile out there if people are playing your stuff.
A strange confusion around the difference between a story and a game also seems to exist. I've seen so many mod pages or blog posts where people say, "we've almost got the story finished so we can start building soon".
Story means feck all when building games. Its a veneer painted over gameplay to make the whole thing more pallettable. It's a delivery package for gameplay but it should always come secondary to gameplay.
Finally I don't understand why weapon models seem to be the first thing that mod teams focus on. Its almost always the first sneek peek you get of any mod, most of which dont make it. There must be a humungous arsenal of weaponry out there that never saw the light of day...

About Me

It's always amazing to me how the online mapping community works for HL2 related games. People post screenshots and talk about the maps they're working on. Finally they release them only for their map to be crucified by the various reviewing sites most of the time..
I think the problem is that while you can learn all there is to know about the mapping editor software, you need to really explore and test the hell out of the gameplay with other people. As a lone mapper you are not capable of designing, building then testing your SP maps effectively because you know exactly what is coming round the corner at any given moment...
Also there seems to be very little information shared about good gameplay vs bad. People seem to just assume that if someone has some skill they will suddenly know all these gameplay elements automatically. Gameplay is always something that is drastically overlooked when designing new maps.
So in my frustration I decided to write blogs that focus entirely on gameplay.